"Can you hear the drums?"

One looks on at life and decides a way to live it. Cultural death, among its many definitions, is to be thrown off this path one chooses to follow. More than this perhaps, it is isolation from a feeling of belongingness. A feeling entangled in what one counts as the custom, norm, belief that is true of themselves. In his play, “Death and the King’s Horseman”, Wole Soyinka tries to convey the tension that can exist between two different systems of knowledge. The white man, with his need to claim his own truths as universal, adopts an intolerance for this tense nature of life. He wants to remain immortal in this realm of culture, without recognizing the many worlds that have been set “adrift”. In short, the tango music must drown the beat of drums.

The cultural death of those different, is a given for the white man. The native does not have the right to exercise choice, because the colonizer knows best. For the district officer Simon, and his wife Jane, the world outside their home, and outside their party for the Prince, is and always has been dead. It only comes alive when smothered in their own customs and traditions. Their helper, Amusa, is a testament to this fact. He is only of value because he has converted to Christianity. In other words, he is seen as something close to human because of this conformity. It is the same when assessing Olunde, who has become a subject of pride and concern, specifically for Jane, because of his participation in the “clever”, white world of medicine. In one instance, Amusa describes the Pilkings’ as wearing the “uniform of death.” He is deeply uncomfortable seeing them play with the cloth of the egunguns. Perhaps native culture cannot be conceived by Amusa as anything other than what it is. No matter how hard the white man tries, other worlds will always exist, even if in one’s consciousness. According to Soyinka as well, “memory is the master of death.” In this case, Amusa feels an aliveness in his recollections of what tribal customs stand for. For a moment, he deviates from the rules of the colonizer and there is the proof. That this kind of death is probably the only kind that has a tentativeness, that is, an undercurrent of reversal beneath it.

For some natives, in this case, cultural death is something that can be avoided then. Elesin, according to his fellow community members, is at the “gateway of great change”. This custom of taking his own life, does not represent an end, but rather something that keeps the world on its due “course”. For them life goes on, even when one is no longer part of the world of “flesh”. What is most interesting however, is how the white man’s intermission into this ritual, is in part Elesin’s fault. He is held responsible and cast away as someone unworthy of “honor.” This is where he truly dies, for “life ends…when honor ends”. Olunde, by killing himself, is in some way able to restore the order of the world, but in this order, Elesin has no place. He strangles himself in the end, so that he can live in some way, even if in a “heaven” where he is condemned. For them, life does not need to cease, and if it does, it is not because this is inevitable, but because one has disregarded duty. He can no longer choose to live that life. This is the way of their world: to not belong in it, is largely no one’s fault but their own.

These two understandings of cultural death then, create a new tension. For the colonizer there is great opportunity to exploit here. Through epistemic violence, which is claiming their own knowledge to be superior, they take the native as an unthinking vessel. One that they can infuse with their own customs and “logic”. Amusa by assigning “respect” to his fellow natives fights this imposition inwardly. Elesin, demonstrates this fight in another way. But in both cases, death is something they feel they can define with or without the white man’s invasion. So, the white man does what he pleases, all the while thinking he can defeat opposition. When really, death was never his weapon, but a notion that kept the native in resistance.